Aviopolis Thesis by Guangmao Xu Instructed by Prof. Darla Lindberg
Thesis Research Copyright @ 2016 Pennsylvania State University Department of Architecture All Rights Reserved
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Abstract Thesis Statement Research Airport Study Proposal Project 1 Project 2 Summary
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Abstract
“A mile of highway will take you just one mile, but a mile of runway will take you anywhere!” - Wanderlust Quotes Air travel has changed our life significantly. Airports become more and more important in the urban life. With the rapidly increasing air traffic, the scale of a modern airport – which is able to process more than 100 million passengers per year– is far beyond the scale of an ordinary concept of building. Also, in order to achieve service and efficiency, airport is embedded with high inner complexity. At the end, the view of designing an airport simply as designing a larger building is no longer echoing the time. Airport today, is as big and organic as a city. With the considerations, the aim of the paper is to envision a future airport, not in a sense of void idea, but based on the new understanding of airport’s role in modern urban form.
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Thesis Statement
The view of designing an airport simply as designing a larger building is no longer echoing the time. Airport should be an organic part of the city instead of being seperated as a large single utility building.
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Research
The research starts with examining the concept of “Aviopolis”. The concept of “Aviopolis” firstly appeared in the 1970s in USA. Different terms such as “airport city” or “Areotropolis” could address the same meaning. Initially, it refers to the development of industrial and business parks in the vicinity of airports. Nowadays, it has been used to describe of aeronautical and non-aeronautical land developments occurring at modern airports worldwide. [1] This notion is acknowledged by some agents from economic perspective -- Aviopolis is a cluster of economic functions, and from airport operating perspective – Aviopolis is an enterprise mode and a marketing tool that attract business to its surrounding locations. However, some researcher start to relate Aviopolis to urban planning and architecture. Aviopolis is being seen as a new urban form. The discussion is to be seen from the publications of Dr. John D. Kasarda and Dr. Gillian Fuller. Kasarda offers a macro view of how airport influence systems and structure of cities or regions, while Fuller provides a micro view of how air travel changes people’s urban ideology and behavior.
[1] Peneda, Mauro Jose Aguiar, Vasco Domingos Reis, and Maria do Rosario MR Macario. Critical Factors for Development of Airport Cities. No. 11-1741. 2011.
Fig 1 Airport City Stockholm Urban Design by Spacescape
Fig 2 Site plan of Airport City Stockholm Urban Design by Spacescape
"Aviopolis is about how air travel has changed everything on the ground" -- Gillian Fuller
003.1
Dr. Kasarda's view of Aviopolis
The following, according to Dr. Kasarda, describes a visionary picture of the “Aviopolis”. The airport anchors the city, and airport area becomes the center or downtown area of the city. The form and function of airport cities could be divided into three scopes. [2] The form and function of airport cities could be divided into three scopes. 1)The functional core of the airport city is the passenger terminal. In addition to the primary aeronautical function, the terminal offers “consumer place” for passengers, terminal is morphing into shopping malls, business lounge, and becoming a mini-city in its own right. 2)The second scope is airport forecourt and other airport properties. The forecourt is valued as community and business center. Provides the key business infrastructure. 3)Lastly the area beyond the airport fence progresses the commercial complex outwards. Enterprise zone, residential zone and logistics zone are forming around.
[2] Kasarda, John D. "The evolution of airport cities and the aerotropolis." Airport cities: The evolution (2008).
Fig 3 Dr. John Kasarda's Aviopolis/Aerotropolis model depicts the multimodal infrastructure, commercial, and residential aspects of the Aerotropolis
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Dr. Fuller's view of Aviopolis
According to Fuller, Airport is the systems of global movement and “techo-cultural” processes. [3] It firstly could be interpreted as a twofold. 1) On the one hand, airport is a type of mechanism designed to facilitate global masstransportation as efficient as it can. In airport, people’s movement is programmed in a steady way. This is achieved by applying a universal signage system and international language. And everything is in a universal language to remove the distinction among individuals 2) On the other hand, the movement process of airport indicates a transit life. In order to move smoothly, the citizen in Aviopolis must be bonded with certain set of rules such as security and check-in. “Our bodies are channeled in a manner that is not really determined by personal choice.”
[3] Fuller, Gillian, and Ross Harley. Aviopolis: A book about airports. Black Dog Publishing, 2004.
Sterile Non-sterile Fig 4 Accoding to Dr. Fuller, airport is a machine that effectively process passenger movements from land to air: separation and flow; access and control.
Process Hold
Fig 5 Accoding to Dr. Fuller, airport is a machine that effectively process passenger movements from land to air: separation and flow; access and control.
Citations Fuller, Gillian, and Ross Harley. Aviopolis: A book about airports. Black Dog Publishing, 2004. Gordon, Alastair. Naked airport: A cultural history of the world's most revolutionary structure. University of Chicago Press, 2008. Kasarda, John D., and Greg Lindsay. Aerotropolis: the way we'll live next. Macmillan, 2011. Kasarda, John D. "The evolution of airport cities and the aerotropolis." Airport cities: The evolution, 2008. Peneda, Mauro Jose Aguiar, Vasco Domingos Reis, and Maria do Rosario MR Macario. Critical Factors for Development of Airport Cities. No. 11-1741. 2011.
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Airport Study
Airport Mechanism Airport's Aeronautical factors Airport Navigation Taxiing Arrival and Departure The Changing Facts of Airport
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Airport Mechanism
Airport is a machine to process movement from landside to airside or from airside to landside. Airport has three programmatic elements: 1) Airside terminal facilities 2) Landside terminal facilities 3) Terminal buildings facilities
Each part has different function and interrelates with each other. The capacity of an airport is determined by the number and Fig 6 Airport mechanism: from landside to airside
size of runway. And the efficiency of airport relies on the whole system.
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Airport's Aeronautical factors
Airport's site selection highly relies on areonautical factors. It requires noise control - reducing airplane noise effect to a bearable level. Usually airport has to keep a distance with the majority of city to avoid noise problems. However, at the same time the airport has to be near enough to the city because of its accessibility issues. This makes a contradiction between airport and city. Today, the noise problem ultimately severely modified the development of new airports. In addition, noise curfews were introduced at many existing airports, such as John F. Kennedy in New York, London’s Heathrow, and Kingsford Smith Airport near Sydney.
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Airport Navigation
Crosswind and obstacles are two big issues of airport Parallel plus cross -wind runway
navigation. It's ideal for airplane to take off against the wind direction. However, when there is crosswind or tailwind, the airplane taking off and landing would have safety problems. Most airports have a diagnal runway
Four Parallels
as an alternative way to deal with crosswind. Thus the airplane can take off or land in the right direction at all the time.
Open V runway
The path of taking off or landing should be free of obstacles. There is a minimum clearance distance for runway to avoid potential obstacles. The distance is determined by visibility of the condition. With good visibility in fine weather, the distance requirment is small.
Parallel plus cross -wind runway
While in bad weather with poor visibility. The distance is further and IFR/Instrumental Flight Rules is required. Usually signage systems are used in airports to guide airplanes
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Taxiing
Taxiing refers to all the airplane movement on the ground. This includes airplane movements from runway to apron area through taxiway. Airplane maintenance, refuling, and the turnover before the next flight. Airplane could move with its own engine power or be towed by truck. In big airports, there are hundreds of landings and taking off each day. All the movements happen on the ground level, which is very complex to operate and requires high cooperations between air teams and ground teams.
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Arrival and Departure
Airport arrival and departure all happen in terminal buildings. In small airport, arrival and departure are on same level and side by side. In bigger airport with more passenger capacity arrival and depature are on split levels or on multipule levels. Air bridge is needed in multiple levels terminal design. Although multiple levels terminal is able to process more passenger capacity. The passengers ususlly walk longer distance and take more time to figure out sign information. This experience is quite tedious in airport.
Citations Edwards, Brian. The modern airport terminal: New approaches to airport architecture. Taylor & Francis, 2004. Kazda, AntonĂn, and Robert E. Caves, eds. Airport design and operation. Emerald Group Publishing, 2015. Manual, Aerodrome Design. "Part 1—Runways." (1983). Manual, Aerodrome Design. "Part 2: Taxiways, Aprons and Holding Bays." (2005).
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The Changing facts of Airport
Along with the increasing capacity and massive movement requirements. There are several changing facts that make airport larger in its scale and more complex in its program. The three major changing facts are: airport is being privatized; airport is becoming an enterprise mode; and the globalization. Those changing facts make a challenge to conventional idea of designing airport as a large utility building and make new requirments to airport design. There is also a chance to let us reexamine the relationship between airport and city.
Privatization Airport is being privatized. Previously, most airport is owned by governments or local authorities. And over 90 percent of airport revenue came directly from aeronautical revenue such as fees from the airlines company. Today airport is being privatized and more and more airports are managed by companies and private parties. Today over 44 percent of airport revenue comes from non-aeronautical revenue such as duty-free shop and car rentals. As a result, airport involves more and more
Aeronautical Revenue Non-aeronautical Rvenue
commercial space in its program.
Enterprise Mode High –tech Manufacturer
Airport is becoming an enterprise mode. For example, many big companies choose to place their headquarters in airport area because they are relying on the fast speed of air transportation to win the international competition.
International Convention
Logistics
Also the emerging high-tech manufactures such as biotech and chemistry industries choose to locate their factories in airport area because they are also need the
Commercial
Business Hub
fast transportation of air travel. As a result, the program of airport become more and
Hotel
more complex - just as complex as a small city instead of being a single large utility building.
Global Chain
Air Cargo
Globalization has significantly changed airport program. According to a survey, air cargo takes about 40 percent product value of all the cargo service in the world.
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Proposal
There is a major contradiction between airport and the city. On the one hand, the city needs airport as far away as possible because of the noise problems and navigation safety problems. On the other hand, the city needs the airport as near and accessible as possible as required by the changing facts of airport. The proposal is to add walls in the middle of the city to seperate the airport and the rest of the city. And the walls are inhabitable by above mentioned program. The analysis is as follows:
Noise Buffer
Add Walls
Shopping Mall
Convention Center
Program
Manufacturer
Cargo Center
Business Hub
Hotel
Noise Buffer
Runway
Noise Buffer
Wind
Navigation Crosswind & Free of obstacles
Wall Light
Runway Light
2640ft
200ft
Dimension 3000ft/IFR 13,200ft 8,000ft
Airport
Tunnel
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Project 1
The wall is the basic idea of the project 1, everything is developed from the wall idea. The core idea of the project1 is to fit the large-scale wall into the normal city context and build the wall in the way without being overwhelming. The wall embraces the idea of "the city near mountains" and try to imitate the form of the mountain. The transition area is penetrating into the city and provide multiple public spaces for the city. Citizens can access the wall easily. Also, the "waterfall" provides a pool for the city. The plan shows the taxiing, service area for the airplane, and the arrival & departure of the airport.
Project 1 The wall embraces the idea of "the city near mountains" and try to imitate the form of the mountain.
Project 1 The transition area is penetrating into the city and provide multiple public spaces for the city.
Project 1 Citizens can access the wall easily. Also, the "waterfall" provides a pool for the city.
Project 1 The plan shows the taxiing, service area for the airplane, and the arrival & departure of the airport.
Project 1 The plan and section show the taxiing, service area for the airplane, and the arrival & departure of the airport.
Project 1 The lighting on the wall becomes the visual guide of airplane.
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Project 2
The project 2 is a utopian project of the imaginative city that dominated by air travel. Air travel will dominate the global transportation in the future since air travel is faster, more reliable and even more sustainable. The air travel will shape a vertical city in the future instead of a conventional horizontal city, because of air travel is in a 3D dimension while ground-surface is in 2D dimension, which is very inefficient and easy to get jammed. The thesis envisions a city that dominated by air travel. All the ground transportation infrastructures are replaced by air corridor in different lattitudes. Cities become small clusters of high-rise buildings, and space in-between is returned to nature and agriculture.
Project 2 The thesis envisions a city that dominated by air travel. All the ground transportation infrastructures are replaced by air corridor in different lattitudes.
Project 2 Cities become small clusters of high-rise buildings, and space in-between is returned to nature and agriculture.
Project 2 The air travel will shape a vertical city in the future instead of a conventional horizontal city, because of air travel is in a 3D dimension
Project 2 The air travel will shape a vertical city in the future instead of a conventional horizontal city, because of air travel is in a 3D dimension
Project 2 The project 2 is a utopian project of the imaginative city that dominated by air travel. Air travel will dominate the global transportation in the future.
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Summary
The paper examines the concept of Aviopolis/Airport City. The views of Aviopolis from Dr. Kasarda and Dr. Fuller give deeper understanding of how the airport is changing the urban form. The technical aspects of airport are also been examined such as navigation, noise, taxiing and arrival & departure. However, more technical evidence is to be studied to rationalize the project. For instance, verify the acoustic feasibility of the walls as noise buffer. The thesis is a meaningful experiment of the city that dominated by air travel.
Bibliography Augé, Marc. "Non-places: towards an anthropology of supermodernity." Trans. John Howe. New York: Verso, 1995. Charles, M. B., Barnes, P., Ryan, N., & Clayton, J. “Airport Futures: Towards a Critique of the Aerotropolis Model.” Futures, 39 (9), 10091028. 2007. Fuller, Gillian, and Ross Harley. Aviopolis: A book about airports. Black Dog Publishing, 2004. Gordon, Alastair. Naked airport: A cultural history of the world's most revolutionary structure. University of Chicago Press, 2008. Kasarda, John D., and Greg Lindsay. Aerotropolis: the way we'll live next. Macmillan, 2011. Kasarda, John D. "The evolution of airport cities and the aerotropolis." Airport cities: The evolution, 2008. Peneda, Mauro Jose Aguiar, Vasco Domingos Reis, and Maria do Rosario MR Macario. Critical Factors for Development of Airport Cities. No. 11-1741. 2011. Edwards, Brian. The modern airport terminal: New approaches to airport architecture. Taylor & Francis, 2004. Kazda, Antonín, and Robert E. Caves, eds. Airport design and operation. Emerald Group Publishing, 2015. Manual, Aerodrome Design. "Part 1—Runways." (1983). Manual, Aerodrome Design. "Part 2: Taxiways, Aprons and Holding Bays." (2005).